Monday, March 7, 2011

Charlie Sheen - Hero of Hedonism

So the other day I saw someone post on yahoo answers this phrase that really stuck, Hero of Hedonism.
He's a hero of Hedonism with an Aegis shield of shaming deflection. (that bit is my addition on twitter)

You know, no one really knows what's going on but I know that it is awesome. What is funny is the media seems to be predominantly dominated by the detractors. However, there is probably a large portion of guys and girls that think its hilarious and awesome. He does reflect an opinion divide that slices right down the middle I think. What is really interesting is if you take the theory that he's being completely intentional about his 'performance' (I mean he is getting paid to do Twitter after all) then he seems to have Loki-like rationalism. Even if it's an unintentional consequence of the so called train wreck (he's probably been like this the whole time, just not under the microscrope) it's still interesting.

Charlie Sheen is my hero. Not because hegoes on five-day benders, takes binbags of drugs and cavorts with ladies of the night. That would be recklessly self-indulgent behaviour in anyone over the age of 21, never mind in a 45-year-old actor with a primetime TV job and a wife and children at home. No, he’s my hero because he refuses to allow his behaviour to be psychologised. He refuses to genuflect before the Oprahite altar of psychobabble and blame his antics on his “inner demons”. Instead he’s fighting like a terrier against experts’ attempts to brand him as “disordered” and in the process has made himself into a one-man army of resistance to the tyranny of therapy that has the twenty-first-century in its grip.

In a TV interview,ABC’s Andrea Canning asked Sheen if he was bipolar. When he said “no”, and hinted that somepeople (editor: this is to prevent against people insta-reacting and automatically reading 'some people' as 'all people') claim to be bipolar simply to excuse their erratic behaviour, she looked at him as if he was – in that other favoured phrase of the therapeutic industry – in denial.

Either way, if you think he's a hero of hedonism or an idiot that needs to go away, none of this would be possible if not for humanity's 'captivation with the interesting and the ugly'. Wont for demand, we wouldn't be seeing this in the media. Imagine a tv series or movie about someone who has everything going right for them, full of beauty and lack of the ugly. This show would be the most boring piece of material never to see the silver screen. There has to be some ugly to contrast the beauty against.